Westmarket

Back To School

9:13 am, Saturday, October 12.

Smoke filled his lungs and he struggled to breathe, consciousness cruel as he awoke into it. He rolled onto his side, and instantly regretted the action, his body wracked with bruised agony. He vaguely remembered falling, and the cold clutches of a strange mist, but mostly he recalled the constant barrage of dreams, filled as they were with the moaning dead. The fire's coals had dwindled into steaming ash, and Stephen forced himself to sit up, his head pounding, a thick layer of dried blood flaking off his skin as he inspected the wound with his fingertips. He had no idea how long he had been out, but it had to have been a significant amount of time, especially with the nausea of hunger assailing him, and the bright, relentless sunshine that beat down on him with vicious fervour.

He had a sudden memory of Jared Strome and he struggled to gain a better perspective as he sat all the way up, his mid section bruised from the fall he had taken. The spotlight he had turned on flickered on and off, its glow a heat lamp of brightness that competed with the sun overhead. Stephen crawled to his knees, and gained a good view of the fire's remnants, the exploded jars of nail polish and the partially burned red purse that Jeannine had slung over her shoulder lay in its epicentre. It was a good analogy of what had happened, Stephen thought, all these burned bits and pieces of human junk.

Strange, how he was the lone survivor, the things that shuffled as one in the cold, cold dark leaving him be as they headed for the warmth of the living. Perhaps they sensed his inner death wish and felt an odd kinship with him, leaving him to rot on his own.

He felt askew as he sat up, his knees aching, his stomach heaving with hunger and pain. One eye was closed shut, the one closest to the swollen wound on his forehead. He'd been knocked out pretty good, he figured, and after a cursory inspection he could see that the only thing really giving him a hard time was the pain in his head and the swollen eye, both of which would heal. Not too bad, considering what his fate could have been.

He glanced over at the steaming pile that was once Jeannine, her body reduced to the strange, grey ash that covered the Earth, her brightly coloured, fake nails the only remnant that remained. They glittered gold in the bright sunlight, a strict contrast to the overall tones of grey and green that pervaded the landscape. Stephen grabbed his backpack, feeling sick as he stood up, his stomach punching itself into a tiny ball as he got to his feet. He doubled over and vomited thick globs of clotted blood, the heaving continuing long after his stomach had purged all of his injury from it. His nose was broken, and he'd swallowed back blood as he lay on the cold ground, unconscious. He used a nearby tree for support, and leaned against it, getting a good perspective on his surroundings.

He could see the remnants of Jared Strome, or at least his outline, the last pink pieces of his intestinal tract laying in a tangled heap on the green grass. He dry heaved as he thought on the freezing form of Jared Strome snapping in half, his blood partially frozen, nerve endings poking out like fibre filaments from his broken spine. There were no bones left, only that strange dust that Jeannine had also disintegrated into, their bodies spent into grey cigarette ash. But they hadn't burned, not in the traditional sense, and Stephen had a lingering, horrific memory of frozen air and the brutal pain of its frostbite touch.

How had he survived? He studied the fire pit, with its spent remains, the log that still smouldered, the mist that crackled out of the lingering heat. The fire, was that all it took? No, that wasn't the only tool he had unwittingly used, not with the way the spotlight still sputtered against where he had passed out, its shining light giving him a headache. Light. The mist, like the undead grey things that crawled across the Earth, was as sensitive to the effects of it as the undead were. Light had staved off the deadly cold. The mist, like a living entity, had recoiled from it, leaving him whole.